Sunday, 18 March 2007

Invest more in research training, say universities

Research training at the doctoral level should be a
major focus of European research and development policy in the coming
years, the League of European Research Universities (LERU) has said in
a statement on doctoral training and the Bologna Process.

'In order to boost this continent's competitiveness and economic
strength it is vital to invest in education, and in particular in
higher and postgraduate education, since Europe's mostly
technologically advanced knowledge economies are now crucially
dependent on their ability to push the frontiers of knowledge in order
to create a competitive advantage,' LERU writes.

The aim of the Bologna Process is to create a European Higher
Education Area by 2010. In its statement, LERU points out that 'the
organisation of research and doctoral training in Europe is highly
fragmented, with over one thousand universities conferring doctoral
degrees'. However, it is concerned that the degree of uniformisation
that the Bologna Process has created for Bachelor and Maste
r degrees
will not be beneficial to research-based PhD training.

'Research-based PhD training, which requires a careful balancing of
educational and research perspectives, is fundamentally different from
the preceding education cycles,' states the paper. 'It would be unwise
to create uniform, top-down, regulatory processes, such as credit
ranges for the research-based PhD, or to regulate the status of
doctoral candidates as students or employees.'

LERU believes that Europe should promote greater diversity among
higher education institutions, under which each institution is
encouraged to play to its strengths, be they in carrying out top level
research or providing skilled graduates for local industry.

One important aspect of the Bologna process is mobility, and here
LERU recommends that Europe support a genuine choice of location and
country for the best doctoral candidates and enable 'better knowledge
exchange processes between universities and businesses in order to
increase the uptake of PhD graduates in the business world'.

The European ministers responsible for higher education will next discuss the Bologna Process at their meeting in London in May.